Two Michigan College Players Headed to Augusta National Women’s Amateur
Edited by Tom Lang
University of Michigan women's golf junior Hailey Borja was invited to participate in the 2022 Augusta National Women's Amateur, March 30-April 2.
With an international field of women amateurs, the field will compete in a 54-hole stroke-play event. Starting with 36 holes at the Island and Bluff nines at Champions Retreat Golf Club, the field will be cut down to the top 30, who will advance to Augusta National for the final round, Saturday April 2.
The entire field will first play an official practice round at Augusta on that Friday.
In her Michigan playing career, Borja has earned All-Big Ten second team honors (2020, '21) as she was the first U-M freshman to earn an all-conference honor. She has started 19 straight events for the Maize and Blue and carries a 73.25 career scoring average, which is on pace to set the all-time Wolverine record.
In her 19 college events, she has 11 top 20 finishes, with four among the top five, including a recent win at the FGCU duel (Jan. 18) and a tie for fifth at the NCAA Championships (May 21-26, 2021), the top finish by a Wolverine at the national championship.
Away from collegiate events, Borja has eight USGA tournaments to her credit, including three straight appearances at the U.S. Women's Amateur Championships. Advancing to match play in all three of those events, she reached her best finish last year making the Sweet 16.
MSU’s Valery Plata:
Michigan State senior women's golfer Valery Plata (Floridablanca, Colombia) was invited to participate in the 2022 Augusta National Women's Amateur (ANWA. The inaugural event was held in April of 2019, bringing together an international field of the best women's amateur golfers.
"It's one of the top accomplishments of my career so far," Plata said about the invitation. "I've wanted to play in this ever since it was a thing. I actually remember calling Stacy (Slobodnik-Stoll) from home when I heard about it and told her I wanted to play in it and I wanted to figure out what I had to do. That was three years ago.
This is yet another honor for Plata, who had a tremendous fall while playing on the college circuit and in international events. She led the Spartans in stroke average (73.00) in 12 rounds, while winning both the Women's Amateur Latin American (WALA) Championship in Argentina in November and then becoming the first-ever women's winner of the Patriot All-American Invitational in Arizona in December.
Ranked No. 42 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings and No. 1 in the South American amateur ranks, Plata's win in Latin America automatically qualified her for two of the five Professional Majors in 2022, the AIG Women's Open and the Evian Championship. In June 2021 she made the cut at the Meijer LPGA Classic as well, scoring 4-under par.
Plata, a 2-time First Team All-Big Ten selection and the 2020 Big Ten Player of the Year, has played in the last two U.S. Women's Amateurs and was a semifinalist in 2020. Plata is the second Michigan State women's golfer to be selected to play in the ANWA, joining Allyson Geer-Park, who earned invitations in both 2019 and 2020 (the 2020 event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Plata will not be the only Michigan State golfer to be playing in Augusta in April as James Piot (Canton), the 2021 U.S. Amateur winner, will play in the Masters.
"It's tremendous," Slobodnik-Stoll said. "What we did over the last two years, with Valery a semi-finalist in 2020 in the U.S. Women's Am, then Valentina (Rossi) a semifinalist in the 2021 Am and then James (Piot) winning the U.S. Am, with those two driving (to Pennsylvania) to watch James win, it's just a very special time in the history of our program and something that we will always remember."
